New Funding Bolsters Global Health Training
Recovery Act Will Help Campuses Meet Student Demand for More
Courses
New funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will
enable the National Institutes of Health to help four more schools
satisfy student demand for global health studies.
Dartmouth College, the University of California, Irvine, the University
of New Mexico and Yale University will join 12 institutions that
last year were awarded the Fogarty International Center’s prestigious
Framework grants, which make it possible for faculties to work
across disciplines to bring their expertise to bear on improving
global health.
"Framework will make us more competitive in the global health
arena," said Fogarty director Roger I. Glass, M.D., Ph.D. "We
consider this program as creating the infrastructure for America’s
international research and training, which links to the U.S. and
foreign scientific community, and ultimately results in better
health at home and strong diplomacy abroad."
Including these awards, 35 schools have received Framework grants
since the program’s inception in 2005. Within these institutions,
faculty from more than 17 different disciplines have participated,
including those from schools of medicine, public health, anthropology,
law, engineering, environmental sciences, journalism, business,
and others.
The money, made possible by the Recovery Act, will preserve and
create U.S. jobs in the timely and competitive arena of global
health research.
At Dartmouth, the Recovery Act support will partially fund three
faculty positions dedicated to teaching and expanding the international
health curriculum and add a part-time administrative assistant,
said principal investigator C. Fordham von Reyn, M.D. The funds
are pivotal in allowing three professors to develop new courses
leading to a certificate in international health for undergraduates
that will also be available to medical and graduate students, he
said.
At UC Irvine, the grant will create one part-time program coordinator
position, two summer fellowships for undergraduate students, three
summer fellowships for graduate students and one fellowship for
junior faculty or a research scientist, said Guiyun Yan, Ph.D.,
a public health professor. The money will go toward developing
new courses and to establish a global health concentration in the
master of public health program, he said.
The University of New Mexico program, the first of its kind in
the Southwest, will support job creation and preservation by hiring
one new full-time administrative assistant, providing part-time
consulting work in information technology for Web site development
and training nine graduate student fellows a year to meet the demand
for global health professionals. It will also support the local
economy by bringing in regional speakers and guests to an annual
symposium on global health, said Douglas J. Perkins, Ph.D., the
head of the program.
At Yale, Robert Dubrow, M.D., Ph.D., associate dean of public
health, said,
"The grant will be critical in helping to mobilize the full
intellectual resources of Yale to address the world’s pressing
global health problems. " Noting that the health of the local
New Haven economy is dependent on the economic health of Yale,
he said the grant will directly support one-quarter of a faculty
member’s time and half of a project coordinator’s.
"Just as important is that the Framework program catalyzes
new externally funded research projects that will provide even
more salary support to faculty and employ research support personnel," Dubrow
said.
The activities described in this release are being funded through
the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). To track the
progress of HHS activities funded through the ARRA, visit www.hhs.gov/recovery.
To track all federal funds provided through the ARRA, visit www.recovery.gov.
The Fogarty International Center, the international component
of the NIH, addresses global health challenges through innovative
and collaborative research and training programs and supports and
advances the NIH mission through international partnerships. For
more information, visit www.fic.nih.gov.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) — The Nation's
Medical Research Agency — includes 27 Institutes and Centers
and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
It is the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting basic,
clinical and translational medical research, and it investigates
the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases.
For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov. |